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Don't let recruiting pressures force you into a hasty decision to provide your sales and service people with
company cars. "It's a trap," says Stephen Albano, founder and president of Offtech Inc., a fast-growing (zero to $25 million in five year)
distributor of office equipment based in Malden, Mass. 'Once you start buying cars, you can't get out of it."
Instead, Albano pays each of his 64 salespeople and 140 technicians a flat fee, pus 10 cents a mile, for on-the-job
use of their own cars. "We could have 250 cars in fleet," he says. "Then we'd have to have a staff to run things" - not to mention maintenance
and insurance.
Albano admits that his no-car policy is a disadvantage in recruiting, but he finds he can get around it by
"walking [job candidates] through the logic." Most of them, he says, would prefer to choose their own cars, rather than drive a model selected
by the department. The system also eliminates one potential source of bad morale -- the used company car. "How would you feel if, your
first day on the job, you got stuck with a 45000-mile company car that needs new tires and has a rip in the seat?" |
